Fighting With Fires - Decentralize Control to Increase Responsiveness

This monograph on military theory examines the subject of fire support effectiveness and responsiveness. Despite the Army’s effort to improve its ability to fight with fires, its effectiveness rate dropped. This hopes to explain how the Army’s centralized control of fires to facilitate massing of fires, coupled with a poorly developed digital fire control system are the root causes of failure. Theory is further used to predict the role of fires in the future and shows that centralized control works directly against the Army’s focus on high tempo, decisive maneuver operations.